business
Colombia wants to mine bitcoin with surplus renewable energy
Key takeaways
- Petro called it "an immense boost to the development of the Caribbean," and floated the idea of giving the Wayúu community, Colombia's largest Indigenous group based on the same coast, co-ownership of the project.
- A 2024 World Bank report found Colombia generates as much as 75% of its electricity from renewable sources, more than twice the global average.
- Petro believes mining bitcoin with that idle electricity beats letting it go unused, with the side benefit of avoiding the fossil-fuel emissions concerns that have dogged the industry elsewhere.
President Gustavo Petro said in a X post Tuesday that the cities of Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Riohacha could become bitcoin mining hubs by tapping into the country's surplus clean energy, following the playbook that has worked for Venezuela and Paraguay over the past few years.
Petro called it "an immense boost to the development of the Caribbean," and floated the idea of giving the Wayúu community, Colombia's largest Indigenous group based on the same coast, co-ownership of the project.
A 2024 World Bank report found Colombia generates as much as 75% of its electricity from renewable sources, more than twice the global average. The Caribbean coast in particular has wind and solar capacity that the country has barely tapped commercially.
Article preview — originally published by CoinDesk. Full story at the source.
Read full story on CoinDesk →
More top stories
Also covered by
Aggregated and edited by the Scoop newsroom. We surface news from CoinDesk alongside other reporting so you can compare coverage in one place.
Editorial policy · Corrections · About Scoop